


bluebird bruise

by mnemememory



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: (and so does molly lol), Gen, and dead people, i live bitches, some light descriptions of gore, spoilers from 111 onwards
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-11
Updated: 2020-11-11
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:47:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27506353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mnemememory/pseuds/mnemememory
Summary: Mollymauk Tealeaf fucking exists.(or...he did).
Relationships: Mollymauk Tealeaf & Yasha
Comments: 3
Kudos: 32





	bluebird bruise

Here’s how to not exist:

When Yasha is a year smaller and one friend undead, she presses the palms of her hands into her eyes and wants to gauge them out. She’s got bruises on her arms, on her legs, on her stomach. Blood soaked under her fingernails, dirt caked up her forearms. Gravedigging is difficult business, especially in the rain.

Gustav had said, “We could leave it.”

Yasha hadn’t cared either way. Yasha wants to keep walking, to not look back. She’s got enough regrets blistering her tongue without shoving more down her throat. This seems like such a small thing. A stranger, sitting slumped in a chair, breathless and blue.

Molly plants his feet into the sodden ground and refuses to walk.

“He was somebody,” he says.

“I don’t care,” Gustav says. “We have a deadline to meet. Tomorrow we’re supposed to be in the next town.”

“I’ll do it myself,” Molly says, eyes glinting.

Yasha sighs and gets to the ground. She shoves aside and starts rummaging around for a shovel. Gustav makes a noise like he’s going to object.

“Go on ahead,” Yasha says. She grips the shovel tight between her calloused fingers. “We’ll meet up with you.”

There’s an argument. There’s always an argument, when Molly wants to do something and Yasha complies. _You’re our muscle_ , Gustav says. _We can’t be on the road without our weapon_.

“It won’t take long,” Yasha says. Behind her, is practically vibrating with glee at the look on Gustav’s face. “We will catch up.”

A door slams. Ornna coming out to see the delay, face thunderous. Looking around, Gustav relents and the caravan walks away.

“I hope you’re happy,” Yasha says, hefting the shovel over her shoulder and turning back to the farmhouse.

“Ecstatic,” Molly says. “Come now, we have a body to bury.”

The farm is small, as farms go. All the animals have long-since broken free of their confines and fled into the darkness of the forest. There’s a thick coat of dust clinging stubbornly to every inch of the kitchen – even their footsteps don’t fully clear it away from the wooden floors. The body has started to rot in the most unpleasant of ways, fat purifying and skin starting to slip.

Yasha gags a bit, because this isn’t quite the level of dead that she’s used to, and then goes back outside and gets to work.

Molly is useless. It’s a good thing that Yasha expected this, because otherwise she would have been very irritated at the way he’s just sitting under the cover of the porch and shouting out instructions.

“A little to the left,” he says over the pouring rain.

Yasha fantasises taking the shovel and whacking him on the head.

As if sensing the danger, raises up his arms in the universal gesture of “don’t shoot the messenger”. He’s grinning, though, the bastard.

It takes a long time. Longer than Yasha would have thought. She’s got fantasies playing out in her head of a warm meal and a dry bed – it would be too difficult to set up proper camp in this kind of weather, so Ornna will probably acquiesce to splurging for a night in an inn. Especially now, with two bodies down.

The ground is basically mud. Yasha had tried to find a relatively dry patch over by the barn, but the sheets of rain and the strong winds hadn’t helped in her quest. She’s just wading through it, now, flinging as much of the sodden dirt behind her as far away as her tired arms will let her.

Almost two hours later, Molly comes up and grabs her wrist.

“That’s enough,” he says. He’s still smiling.

Yasha jerks her arm away from him and stomps back to the house. In the time she’s been outside, Molly has cleaned up a little – there’s no longer such a pronounced layer of dust, and the body itself is now wrapped (chair and all) in tarp. It still smells terrible.

Outside, the thunder reigns. Yasha shouldn’t feel this tense in the middle of a thunderstorm.

“I would have brought him out for you,” Molly says. “But I’m afraid he’s a little too heavy for me.”

Yasha studies the knots. “You did a shit job.”

“Rude!”

Yasha ignores him and goes closer. She doesn’t want to. There’s already some seepage from where the rope has tied the tarp too tight, clear and viscus. There aren’t any insects here that Yasha can see, but she doesn’t want to take the risk.

“Here,” she says, grabbing another length of rope from over on the table and wrapping it around where she approximates the head should be. “Get another sheet of tarp.”

“I don’t want to touch it anymore,” Molly says shamelessly. Yasha hits him.

He grumbles and goes, and Yasha is left in the kitchen with a dead man she will never know.

There aren’t any pictures in the house – not of him, or of a family. The whole place is hauntingly empty. Yasha wonders what it would take, to be left alone so long you petrified. She wonders if the circus had never been caught in the rain, had never sought shelter –

How long has he been here? A long time.

Yasha wonders what ever happened to Zuala’s body.

“Here!” Molly says, bursting in and waving another piece of tarp like a flag. Yasha startles and tries to hide it.

“We have to get him out of the chair,” Yasha says.

“Can’t,” says. “He’s all sticky. I tried.”

Yasha groans. “The hole isn’t deep enough to take a chair.”

Molly looks outside. “The hole is probably already gone, at this point.”

“Well, I’m not digging it again,” Yasha says. “So we’re going to shove him into the ground if we have to.”

shrugs. “Should we wait for the rain to stop?”

“No,” Yasha says. This storm is going to last for hours, and she wants to leave this place as soon as possible.

She loosely wraps the tarp and then secures it with the rope. Then she lifts the chair and –

_Sluuurp_.

Yasha grimaces as something drops onto the ground and doesn’t look down. Molly does it for her.

“That’s his leg,” he says.

“Good for him,” Yasha says, and walks outside.

Yasha has never buried anybody before. In the swamp, they leave people out for the wild things to feast, as deep as they dare go from the campsite. There are no graveyards, no markers. The first time Yasha had walked past a field of tombstones, the ground had shook and split forth and poured the undead. It’s not safe to keep bodies close. Something always happens to them.

But this is important for . For some reason, he has decided that this stranger must be buried.

Yasha throws the body into what has now become a miniature lake of dirty water, glad now for the constant rush of rain that clears her armour of whatever mucus has stained it. Molly trots along behind her and throws in the leg.

They stare at the open pond for a few seconds. Yasha glances at Molly’s face, and then sighs and goes to fetch her shovel.

When it’s done, when Molly is satisfied there is nothing left to do, Yasha leads him onto the porch and sits down.

“When I die,” Yasha says. “Don’t bury me.”

“When I die,” says, eyes glowing and hellish. “ ."

Yasha laughs at him softly, leaning back against the wall and closing her eyes. They may as well make themselves comfortable. There’s no travelling out on this weather – not without the relative protection of the caravan. Best wait it out. “You’d better not die.”

“ ,” says. “ ."

“Do you want to go inside?” Yasha says.

“ .”

“It is getting cold.”

“ ."

“And I am tired. From doing all the _work_.”

“ ."

Rolling her eyes, Yasha gets up and goes out into the rain. She closes her eyes and tilts her head and listens to the thunderstorm explode around her. sits undercover and watches.

“That's enough for today, I think,” Lucian says. “You’ll catch a chill.”

**Author's Note:**

> hi?
> 
> haven't posted for a few months....  
> lots of stuff happening. so much. there's family drama. there's grevious injury. there's work promotions. there's fucking covid. i just. hi. 
> 
> i'm not _back_ back yet, but hopefully soon? last episode just really kicked my brain into overdrive. haven't written for a while, so it's a little rusty, but eh.


End file.
